City destroys woman's yard to satisfy suburban mores

Fucking assholes:

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel, it appears there has been a serious snafu in ol' Scarborough. A gardener who spent 10 years cultivating a “native plant garden” of more than 150 species says Toronto bylaw officers went well beyond their authority by chopping it down without warning last week. Deborah Dale returned home from work last Tuesday evening to find the plants removed from in front of her Scarborough home.

The Post's Matthew Coutts reports:
“I called the police because my garden had been vandalized. It’s not the first time I’ve had plants stolen, but to have the entire garden been taken away ... After 10 years it’s not funny in the least,” said Ms. Dale, a former president of the North American Native Plant Society.

City officials confirmed yesterday they were responsible for removing the garden, which was on both Ms. Dale’s Crittenden Square property and on the city-owned boulevard, saying they had received complaints that the garden had become unruly and offensive.

Via Frustrated Mess at babble. This is all too common; suburban fuckheads who want their lawns to resemble a golf course go nuts when one someone in the neighbourhood doesn't follow the same cookie-cutter pattern, and municipalities are all too keen to oblige them. In fact, Cat Lady and Dog Lady were recently ordered to clean up their back yard in Waterloo- even though their front yard is quite ordinary looking, and the most likely suspect as the source of the complaint doesn't even directly adjoin their yard. The dumb fuck is known for making complaints to the city (he got them to order other people on the street to get renovation materials out of their driveway, for instance, even though the stuff was only there for a short time). He is also trying to sell his house for way more than anyone else in the neighbourhood thinks he can reasonably expect; maybe he thinks that the reason his house isn't selling is the "trashy" appearance of the neighbourhood. And no, the neighbourhood is not trashy looking by any reasonable standards.